If you are ever in the Washington, DC area and are tired of looking at monuments and museums, head on over just a little bit north to the Billy Goat Trail. The Billy Goat Trail is a 4.7 mile hiking trail that follows a spectacular path between the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal and the Potomac River. You will start out thinking you are walking through a boring part of Maryland - by the end of the day, you may think you were in another world (or at the very least, out west).

And that's kind of like how today started out. A couple of benchmarks dribbled in. And then suddenly at the end of the day, you realize that this was really a very big day.

The IBM System x3850 X5 delivered leadership results on a slew of benchmarks across an amazing portfolio of different workloads including TPC-E, SAP SD, VMmark, SPECjbb2005, and SPECjEnterprise2010.

There's that moment when you realize as you round the bend and the rocky cliffs of the Potomac stretch out before you -- that this day is so much more special than you ever thought it would be. And how amazing that you can feel just that by sitting in front of a screen with just numbers.

SAP, mySAP and other SAP product and service names mentioned herein as well as their respective
logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all
over the world.

VMware, the VMware "boxes" logo and design, Virtual SMP and VMotion are registered trademarks or trademarks (the "Marks") of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions.

This morning, one of the first things I saw when I got on my computer was an ad for a new Chevy crossover vehicle. What caught my eye was that they compared the gas mileage on the highway to a competitor's. Using a benchmark with a nice footnote based on an industry standard external source.

This morning, one of the first articles I saw when I got on my computer was a press release for HP's new ProLiant servers with AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors. The performance and energy claims are once again solely based on "HP internal testing." Whether it's Westmere, Magny-Cours, Nehalem, Power, or Traverse, internal testing is great, but external benchmarks are even better.

Besides being a new server chip, Magny-Cours is a motor racing circuit located in France. You probably won't find the crossover on this circuit but it is a winner in my eyes today.

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The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

Last night I watched "The Prisoner of Zenda." Both versions. One of my favorite scenes is when the fake King is scaling the castle wall after having a swim in the moat.

There's been a lot of talk recently about POWER7 scaling. Scaling is very important because it shows us what a system can really do, whether it's a small system or a system at the very high end.

It is imperative to stick with the same system when you are doing your scaling analysis -- the same system, chip, GHz, system software, benchmark. If you don't, you're not getting the true scaling ratio. As an example, look at SPECfp_rate2006 on the Power 780 as you go from 16 cores to 64 cores. The scaling ratio is over 95%. (1) I saw a comment on this recently from one of my favorite analysts - "No other system on the planet can scale . . . at that close of a linear scaling ratio."

"Fate doesn't always make the right men kings." In this case, the right man and the right systems scaled the wall.

Last night I got an estimate for a new roof. What amazed me was how much "intelligence" was now part of the architecture. Intelligent gutters, intelligent vents, an intelligent fan. Even intelligent rubber for the flat roofs. What a change from years ago where all you had to do was pick out whether you wanted Burnt Siena or Dusty Brown.

I just finished talking with one of my colleagues, Pam Isom. Pam's organization provides technical architecture services to help drive reuse, improved performance, flexibility, reduced costs and speed to market. And they have a new service. Which is intelligent.

Intelligent Enterprise Architecture (IEA) is a new architectural style and technique that addresses current and future business trends, and the technological impacts of a Smarter Planet using EA. This service can

Another decision I had to make on the roof was which shingles to get - the 30 year, 40 year, or 50 year kind. That decision should be simple enough. Unfortunately it caused me to question my mortality for hours.

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The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

So the way the weather was last month, I decided it would be better to do something more productive than dream of snorkeling and wearing flip flops. I went out and purchased a brand new new-generation pair of cross country skis. The second pair in my life.

With my first pair of skis, from 1982, the "boots" were made of canvas and looked like cheap sneakers. My feet froze in the first five minutes. And the bindings only worked sometimes. I still remember one freezing January night in Wappingers Falls trying to get out of them for almost an hour. I finally took my foot out of the ski "boot" and walked through the snow and up three flights of stairs in my socks.

My new skis have real boots. They are bright silver, padded with something amazing, and incredibly warm. And the bindings always work.

These advances in technology reminded me of today's new IBM System x server announcement. The new Intel Xeon 5600-based systems deliver performance, energy efficiency, and increased consolidation opportunities. Outstanding performance can be seen across a wide portfolio of industry standard benchmarks including SPECjbb2005, SPECpower_ssj2008 and SPEC CPU2006. In fact, today IBM posted the first SPECpower benchmark score of more than 3,000 overall
ssj_ops/watt.(1)

These new systems enable users to recoup acquisition costs in a very short amount of time. I figure that with all the snow we've had this year and all the skiing I've subsequently been doing, I've certainly done the same.

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(1) IBM System x iDataPlex™ dx360 M3 server Performance to Power Ratio of 3,038 overall ssj_ops/watt on the
SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark (dx360 M3 was configured with the Intel® Xeon® Processor X5670 (2.93GHz with 256KB L2 cache
per core and 12MB L3 cache per processor—2 chips/12 cores/6 cores per chip), 12GB of memory, one
50GB solid state drive, and IBM J9 Java 6 (using a 1500MB heap), and Microsoft® Windows® Server
2008 R2 Datacenter Edition. Result current as of March 16, 2010, and has been submitted to SPEC® for review. Upon
successful review, the result will be posted at www.spec.org. View all published results at
www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/results/power_ssj2008.html.

Their latest benchmark press release makes claims on an ECperf benchmark from 2002.

Their Exadata system harks back to the days of closed systems.

Back in Junior High I also remember reading a hints and tips article in my Teen magazine. The article basically said that the optimal place to focus your thoughts is in the present. The next best place to dwell on is the future. And the absolutely worst place to dwell on is the past.

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The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

The device, called a nanophotonic avalanche photodetector, is the fastest of its kind and could enable breakthroughs in energy-efficient computing that can have significant implications for the future of electronics. With optical communications embedded into the processor chips, energy-efficient systems with performance at the Exaflop level might be closer than we think.

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The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.